


a place among the stars

by armoredsoftie



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Dreams vs. Reality, F/M, Hallucinations, Iron Dad, Love Triangles, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Space Flight, Space Opera, mixed up with elements of star wars lore, sort of interstellar au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-15 13:15:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18499714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armoredsoftie/pseuds/armoredsoftie
Summary: “Was he your son?” asked Nebula out of the blue, while chewing on a small ration bar. It was the only thing they ate per day. In less than a week they would run out of food.There were rare, the moments when they just sat and talked.Tony looked at his hands, rough and dirty.“Not biologically, no,” he answered slowly. “But I loved him like he was.”Nebula frowned and crossed her arms, contemplative. She would do that a lot, playing bad girl and pretending to be offended by the simplest things.“He was lucky, then,” she said. It took Tony a couple of seconds to understand her. “He died knowing he was loved. Not everyone gets that luxury.”Post Infinity War Stony angst, or Tony and Nebula’s fantastic space adventure





	a place among the stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is three months of sweat, tears, and sleepless nights. Yeah it's not that long but it's my longest fic in english yet so I feel this is an accomplishment. I'm very proud of this, hope you can enjoy it too.  
> If you're into it, the correct way to read this fic is listening to the [Interstellar soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2oVRx0ymEI&list=OLAK5uy_k_jyaLNvSHgkqN6IrJteUZm4iV80w56tE) on loop.

With his body trembling, he sat at the edge of the bunk bed. He released a little moan of anguish, and taking a deep breath, he brought his hands to the wound. The nanoparts had cauterized the skin around it, preventing him from losing more blood, but a huge part of the armor was still inside his body.

Tony elongated his arm, clumsy, trying to reach the first aid kit that the blue girl (Nebula was her name? He couldn’t remember clearly) had separated for him and left in the table next to the bed. Trembling, he picked up the surgical scissors.

Luck was never on his side. If it was, Thanos would have been more effective while stabbing him and would have aimed for his chest, finishing the job. But destiny was cruel, and vicious. If things had been easier he wouldn’t have to be agonizing on a dying planet, desperately trying to remember his first aid training, knowing it was useless while trying to perform surgery on himself.

He ripped a piece of his destroyed shirt, folded it and inserted it inside his mouth, biting in. Tony moved the scissors closer to the skin and started to open up the wound, ordering to the nanoparts to remove themselves through the gap, slowly.

Only a few times on his life had Tony seen so much blood together. He tried to regulate his breathing, but the pain was deafening. He retained his screams against the cloth, his throat burning. When his brain recieved the signal that all the nanoparts of the armor were outside of his body, he quickly removed the scissors and applied pressure to the wound with a gauze.

Tony threw the scissors on the table and looked for the stapler. If it was inside a first aid kit that should mean it was for surgical use, and he hoped it was biodegradable because the last thing he needed was metal poisoning. He curved his back so the position of his body could allow to join the edges of the wound. He put the stapler against his skin, and closing his eyes, he pushed.

_Click._

An agonizing scream died against the cloth inside is mouth. He kept going.

_Click. Click. Click._

His head was spinning, drunk with pain.

He shifted and started to apply the same treatment to the open wound of his back, practically blind. The intense burning of the wound guided him like a lighthouse at sea, but he was scared of hurting healthy skin anyway.

When he finished closing his wounds, Tony left all the instruments on the table and closed his eyes. He needed to go to the regenerating chamber, that according to Nebula would heal his internal wounds. He thought about Helen and her miraculous cradle, and asked himself if she would still be alive. If any of his friends was still alive: Happy, Rhodey, oh no, _Pepper…_ He wouldn’t be able to go on living if she had vanished. The guilt alone would kill him.

With terrible difficulty, he walked to the chamber with short steps. He sat on the edge, trying to catch his breath, and slowly layed over the surface of the pod. His entire body was screaming with pain and fatigue. His mind was like a nest of furious bees, disoriented and indecipherable. The glass top descended over his body and a white faint light illuminated the chamber.

The fatigue, the pulsating agony of his wounds and the the swarming nest of his mind finally defeated him, and his eyes closed.

 

A rumble woke him up suddenly. He opened his eyes, startled, and found Nebula staring at him from the door. Tony lifted the lid of the regeneration chamber and sat up painfully.

“You're not dead,” she observed.

Tony ran the palms of his hands over his wounds. The agonizing pain had stopped, his internal organs no longer felt on fire. The scar on his abdomen would probably last forever. One more for the collection.

“No thanks to you,” he answered, resentful. She had seem very comfortable on the cockpit of the ship while he performed surgery on himself.

She scoffed. “Wash yourself. You smell like death.”

Tony looked up and saw her retreating from the room, slamming the door shut. Tony felt guilt sink into his stomach. Or maybe he was just hungry, it was hard to differentiate.

He explored the rest of the room and found clothes that had probably belonged to Quill. Wearing his clothes without being able to ask for permission filled his mind with bitterness. Quill had shown himself capable and quick, but impulsive and extremely childish. He did not deserve to die. None of them deserved it.

Fortunately, Tony's pants were still in condition to be worn, so he simply borrowed a red shirt from Quill. It was big, but it was comfortable anyway.

He found the shower and let the water run through his punished body. The dried blood began to stain the water under his feet. The water was cold, and he shouldn’t waste much, who knew how much the ship's tanks had in reserve, and how scarce was the resource in space. He rubbed his skin carefully, and closed his eyes.

Peter's face, terrified, seconds before disappearing into nothingness itself, was etched in his retinas.

Tony clenched his fists, holding back the tears.

He had begged, the poor and miserable boy. He had begged to be exempted, he had clung to life with despair. Peter had embraced him with the terror of a little boy who learns for the first time that death is real and inevitable. And in just a few seconds, he was gone.

Tony hit the wall of the shower hard, holding back the sobs.

One by one, they had started to disappear. But Peter, oh Peter. _Why didn't you stay at school, Peter?_

He gave up and succumbed to tears.

 

Never in his life had he felt so ashamed. The defeat, the anguish, the humiliation, were like regurgitating acid at the bottom of his stomach. His mind kept turning, if he had done this and that differently, if he had planned things better, if he had been smarter, less arrogant, faster...

Maybe they would have lost anyway. Thanos was like a natural force, absolutely inevitable, and apparently impossible to stop. What frustrated him the most was not understanding. How could such a stupid being come to possess so much power? Were there no laws in the universe that prevented it? His plan was simply stupid. Humanity had reached seven billion inhabitants in only two hundred years, reducing them to three point five billions would only delay the same process a hundred more. And if overpopulation was a universal problem, then the patterns of population growth were also. Thanos was just kicking the problem forward for a few years instead of offering a real solution. And committing genocide in the process. The Mad Titan. Thanos, the genocidal.

Maybe it was true, what he said about the balance. Maybe you can only get so much power if you are incredibly foolish.

Maybe it was time to start amending ties.

Exploring the ship he found a room that looked like a kitchen. With storage space, a sink and a table with five chairs. There were traces of dirty dishes, discarded wrappers and crumbs of food. It was strangely cozy. It looked like the dining room of a family.

He rummaged through the cupboards, looking for food. Quill was human, so something edible for Tony must have been there. He found a box that under inspection looked similar to cereal. Deciding that it was low risk, he poured himself a plate. He would had to eat them dry, because he definitely did not trust alien milk.

He found a basket with fruit. It was unlike any he had seen before on earth, but it seemed innocent. He put a pair of it on a plate and walked to the cockpit, balancing both plates. There he found Nebula, sitting in one of the seats, staring at Titan's dirty, dry, and infertile soil through the windows of the ship.

Tony cleared his throat to announce his presence. Nebula ignored him. Rolling his eyes, Tony walked towards her and offered her the plate with fruit.

A few seconds passed, during which Tony was sure he would not succeed. Then she seemed bored with the dead landscape, and observed the dish with reluctance, considering it.

Nebula stared into his eyes. Tony held her gaze.

She reached out and picked up the plate, accepting the peace offering. Tony suppressed his sigh of relief, and sat down in one of the seats next to her, cautious.

They ate in silence. The cereal was dry and extremely sweet, but it was a relief for his stomach.

“We need to get out of this place,” said Nebula after a while. Tony turned to look at her.

“And leave-” his face twisted painfully. “Leave them?”

She seemed charged with fury. "What are you going to do, pick them up with a shovel and a broom? There’s nothing left.”

Tony blinked several times, hurt.

“You’re right.”

She returned to concentrate on her food. Tony looked at his hands, dry and full of small wounds. Nebula seemed to regret her outburst.

“We’ll die if we stay here. This place is barren and haunted.”

Tony did not believe in ghosts, but he was not willing to discover the concept of haunted for an alien either. Besides, she was right. His heart burned at the thought of leaving Peter there (but there was nothing to leave, he was no more than ash.) He needed to return to earth. It was ridiculous to think that the day before he had been walking in Central Park with Pepper. It felt like years ago.

 

It took them an entire day to repair the Benatar enough to take off. Reluctantly, Nebula taught him the basic commands to fly the ship. For him it was simple, the controls were quite intuitive and he knew how to fly planes. Tony would act as co-pilot, which meant firing the ion cannons if they encountered any inconvenience.

They left Titan behind with his heart in his stomach. Nebula put them on course in a hyperspace line on the way to who knew where. She had told Tony that they needed supplies and fast, so they were probably going to some trading post. When the course was stable, Nebula got up from the seat and went silently to the ship's cabins. For once, Tony appreciated the loneliness.

His head was still a mess. He was fine while he was focused, distracted. Fixing up the ship had been a good distraction. But now he had time to sit and enjoy the raging storm of his mind. It was going to be a long journey.

  
  


The wakanadan fields extended over the horizon. The sun kissed the vast plantations and the trees danced along with the whisper of the wind. For the second time in his life, Steve felt like an invader on a sacred place, violating the peace with his mere presence. It had been three days since the battle. It felt like a century had gone by.

“You look like shit,” said Natasha from behind him.

Steve sighed, and he turned his gaze away from the window.

“You haven’t showered in a week, Steve. Supersoldier sweat it’s not a very pleasant smell to coexist with.”

He rolled his eyes and sat down next to her. She turned her nose away from him with a grimace, and Steve had the decency of feeling ashamed.

“I had other things in mind,” he supplied as excuse. Natasa smiled at him, slowly, entirely lacking joy.

“Don’t we all,” she sighed and reclined back on the couch. Steve followed her movement with his eyes. “You should rest. I know you haven't been sleeping.”

Steve looked at his hands. “It's not that I don't _want_ to-”

“Maybe if you slept more you'd have your mind clear and make rational decisions for a change.”

He started back at her, stunned. Natasha raised an eyebrow.

So, she was pissed then.

“If you have a magical solution for insomnia, then I’m all ears,” he said, resenting her.

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have _just_ insomnia, Steve. But if you insist on staying awake, you could do something productive with your time and negotiate our release form Wakandan custody.”

He closed his eyes, and for a moment, allowed himself to hate her. Just a second. Then, he smiled to her.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

To say the Wakandan people were angry at them was an understatement. To the eyes of the civilians, their arrival on their country had only meant death and destruction. They had lost their king, their princess, countless soldiers, and half their population.They were invaders, destroyers of peace.

Steve just wanted to go home.

He was so tired. He hadn’t felt truly exhausted since the day he had been injected with the supersoldier serum. But these days, after everything had been lost, he felt like his body was a prison. His mind run on autopilot, stunned, frozen on a single moment in time and space. Lost.

Everyone was consumed by grief. Not even at wartime had he seen such levels of human loss. Nobody was spared. There wasn’t a single place in the universe where he could be safe from the overwhelming sadness around him.

But he couldn’t feel a thing.

Just numbness. The general inability to function. He couldn't sleep, he couldn't shower, he couldn't shave, he couldn't wash his teeth. He couldn't eat. He couldn't breathe. He just couldn't think.

Maybe it was for the best.

  
  


When Tony was a teenager he fell in love with the stars. He took an astrophysics and cosmology course at MIT, and dreamed of building his own rocket and exploring the skies. He had big plans: to reactivate the space race, to begin sidereal colonization. He would start with a scientific base on the Moon, then a colony on Mars. If he was lucky, he would move there himself. He would form a family and he would never have to see his parents again.

Of course, they were the illusions of a child. He would never see them again, but not by his own choice.

Tony knew all the constellations. He had his favorites: Orion and his companion dog, Canis Majoris. Bright and protective of the winter sky, they made the perfect company.

He loved the stars because they were his compass anywhere. Because they belonged to everyone and nobody at the same time. No one owns a star but anyone can love them. Cold, beautiful, eternal, when everything is lost and nothing has value, the stars would still be there. Faithful.

And treacherous. The sky that was visible from the windows of the Guardian’s ship had different stars. Constellations of another civilization. He felt like a foreigner, lost with a map in another language he didn’t understand. Far away was his beloved Betelgeuse, the proud Sirius, the furious Antares. Or maybe they were very close. He would never be able to know.

“Are you having fun staring at the radiation?”

Tony turned around, startled. Nebula entered the cockpit with heavy steps and obvious difficulty. She sat on the floor in front of him, and watched Tony closely, almost rudely.

“What radiation?” asked Tony, worried. Nebula blinked slowly, as if she thought he was the most idiotic creature in the universe.

“The cosmic radiation…? It's everywhere. It's impossible not to notice it.”

Tony tried a small smile. “Oh, right. My eyes can't perceive wavelengths of such low energy, but I know of it. I just can't see it.”

Nebula didn't change her expression, but something in the silence that lingered suggested to Tony that she hadn't considered the possibility of his eyesight being different to hers.

“What do you see, then?” she asked, serene, turning to look out of the windows. Tony knew they were moving at an incredible high velocity, probably close to lightspeed, but space was so vast and the distances between stars were so impossible to conceive for the human mind that it looked like nothing was changing.

“I see blackness,” he said. “On top of it, small lights. Some of them are stars, some are nebulas, some are galaxies. Some dust and ash. But mostly emptiness and dark.”

Nebula seemed like the kind of creature that enjoyed silence. Her posture was always stiff, her expression twisted in a permanent aggressive gesture. But her eyes were sad. There, behind her mean demeanour and cold exterior, Tony could see the kind of sadness that accumulates for decades, rotting the insides of her.  

“You really are blind, Stark,” said Nebula, but not unkindly. She seemed curious, probably trying to imagine the picture he was describing.

Tony had never considered a different sky, with different colors or different stars. The sidereal space was one of those concepts that you never consider change being a part of it. Even when learning about astronomy, times of change were so incredibly slow on a human scale that considering different stars to the ones he knew or could see were just part of his imagination. Or a computer simulation. Never _real_ , never there. The sky was a map to return home. Maps weren’t supposed to change. He always forgot the way wars changed them anyway.

Tony knew she was right, probably more than she realized. He had been blind about everything. He had been arrogant, and selfish. He had let his own hurt dominate his path. A _futurist_ , he called himself. Oh, he had known armageddon was coming, yes. But he had failed as a leader, as a teammate, and as a friend. He had failed so many people. Only if he had been able to see beyond his own nose.

 

The next morning they arrived to a small moon orbiting a giant gas planet.  It was rocky and windy, and Nebula said it’s where they would find the worst scum in the galaxy. The perfect place to blend in. Tony changed into some of Quill’s clothes, and Nebula gave him a cape to cover his head. She had one on already.

“You’re human, and I’m the daughter of Thanos. You’re food to most creatures here, and there’s a bounty of a million credits for my head,” she said, like someone who chats about the weather. “Probably more now, after what happened. Keep your head down and stay close if you want to keep it.”

Tony certainly wanted to keep his head where it was placed, thank you very much.

Nebula had parked the ship on the outskirts of some kind of shop. She paid a small creature with tentacles on its head and said something in a language that was completely indecipherable for Tony. The creature went to the shop and came back with a jerrycan of something. Tony assumed it was fuel for the ship. He watched the creature walk up to the Benatar and open a compartment behind the right wing.

Nebula grabbed his arm in a tight grip and dragged him away from the ship.

“I told you to stay close,” she reprimanded him. Tony followed her with clumsy steps, alarmed. She dropped her grip on his arm and pulled the hood of the cape over her head. They walked a few meters until they reached a small market. The trading post. An endless line of small shops and tents with different kinds of products of the most bizarre things Tony had ever seen in his life. Alien food, clothes for creatures with numerous extremities, furniture with a sort of radioactive glow to it, strange tech that seemed centuries more advanced to anything on earth but ancient at the same time.

Several vendors approached them immediately, speaking fast in dieverse alien languages, bouncing their products on their multiple arms or appendices, trying to get them to buy. Nebula ignored all of them and kept on walking. She reached a corner where two streets met, and she turned give Tony instructions.

“Get food supplies. Terrans can digest most standard ration bars, so buy those.” She reached into one of Tony’s cape’s pockets and dropped a couple of credits. “Don’t talk to anyone, don’t look anyone in the eyes, don’t breathe too loudly. Don’t die.”

Tony just stared at her, feeling stupid.

She sighed, irritated. “Not everyone here has a universal translator. Only the shop vendors.”

Tony nodded. “Got it. Get food from the aliens who speak english. Great.”

Nebula blinked at him, like she couldn't understand a word of what he had just said. Then she rolled her eyes.

“I’ll go get the parts we need to fix the ship. Find me here in half an hour.”

Before Tony could ask for any more instructions, she turned around and got lost in the crowd.

 _Great_. With a sigh, Tony fixed the hood of his cape over his head and started to walk the market, looking for a food stall. A group of kids ran past him, knocking him around, and he covered his pockets. When he finally found a food vendor who wasn't too sketchy looking, he picked up a dozen of those ration bars that looked similar to those that he had found inside the Guardian’s ship. Satisfied, he started to walk back to their meeting point.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw apples. _Apples?_

A weird looking stall that was almost inside a narrow alley had a table full of apples on display. Fascinated, Tony approached the bright pink lady who was attending the shop.

“Are those apples?” he asked, hoping she had a translator. The woman smiled at him, cheerful and forced.

“Terran fruit! Grown in the vast humid valleys of Caldera! Very authentic!”

The fruit in question looked so red, so big and vivid that Tony was sure it had been genetically modified. It looked photoshopped, straight out of a commercial. Like the perfect GMO.

“How much?” he ventured. Maybe one apple.

“A hundred credits!” the vendor said encouragingly. Tony almost choked on air. Fuck he missed being a billionaire. He never thought he’d miss his Amex gold card while stranded on an alien moon. But before Tony could start to consider the investment, a movement deeper inside the alley catched his attention.

A group of men were surrounding a hooded figure, laughing among themselves. They seemed excited about something.

_Nebula._

Some of them had their blasters out, pointing at Nebula’s head. Shit. They had probably recognized her.

She was standing very still, probably evaluating the pros and cons of beheading them one by one, but alerting the entire market of her presence.

Tony had to do something, quick.

“HEY, THAT LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT STOLE MY WALLET,” screamed Tony into the crowd. Around five or six different individuals immediately started to run in different directions, pushing people and causing unrest. People turned around their heads, looking for the source of trouble. Some of them started heated arguments. A couple of vendors started a fight in the middle of the street.

Nobody was paying attention to the alley where Nebula easily and quickly got rid of her attackers one by one with her swords. Tony watched in awe as she ducked their pathetic attempst at catching her, and cut their kneecaps, thoats and arms off their bodies with fluid movements.

She was kneeling over a body when one of the men on the ground slowly raised his head and his arm, still holding his weapon, and pointed it charged towards her back.

Without a second to hesitate, Tony shoot him with a repulsor blast, blowing his head clean off. Nebula turned to him with her sword in the air, and visibly relaxed when she recognized him.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, haughty, and lowered her sword. Tony walked closer to her.

“Your welcome, by the way.” He observed around the pile of bodies. “You seemed pretty helpless without me.”

Clearly she wasn’t in the mood for jokes. “Do you have the supplies or not?”

Tony smiled, cocky. “Of course. Are you really not going to acklowglege-?”

But Nebula was already walking away. Tony used those seconds where she had her back to him to look back to the mess of bodies and silently mourn for his outburst. He didn’t regret killing that man and saving her, but _man_. Every time. It was rough.

He allowed himself a moment to get his shit back together, and then went back to Nebula. She was waiting for him in the entrance of the alley, looking bored.

“We have a couple of hours until we can collect the ship from the shop,” she informed him. “Is there anything you feel it’s absolutely necessary before we go? It’s a long trip.”

Tony shrugged. “A bathroom would be nice.”

Nebula rolled her eyes, but gestured him to follow her. She guided him through the crow for a couple of blocks until they reached a nasty looking, hole-in-the-wall bar by the edge of the town. Without preamble, she entered with firm steps. Tony was sure he had seen nastier places back in the day, when his liver was twenty years younger and his self preservation instincts were strictly non existent.

The tavern was packed with creatures of all kinds. It was almost surprising the amount of races of aliens who were anthropomorphic. Tony was yet to find a classic little green alien. But they all seemed not very friendly, so he stayed close to Nebula. She seemed like she knew her stuff anyway.

Nebula sat at the bar and ordered a glass of something thick and acid. She gestured him to the back of the room where the door to the restrooms were. Tony resigned himself to his fate and went to the nasty alien bathroom.

Another bizarre thing to scratch from the bucket list, apparently. His life, man. It was ridiculous.

 

After using the toilet he stayed in the bathroom for a few minutes, looking at himself in the mirror. Confronting himself.

He had killed a man.

It wasn’t the first time and it probably wouldn’t be the last. But after what happened, after what Thanos had done, after everything they lost. It felt like an unforgivable crime.

Killing had always been an unforgivable crime. How many times had he taken a life  under the excuse of justice and the greater good? Too many to remember.

How many times had he taken a life in order to save those he cared about? Probably not enough.

He didn’t regret it. He needed Nebula. She deserved to live. He wasn’t going to let her be killed by some random bountyhunter.

But still. The guilt, his eternal companion, would never leave him alone.

Tony went back to the bar and saw Nebula chugging  aggressively her third drink, judging by the two empty glasses by her elbow. Poor girl, though Tony. Drowning quicky down that path. He walked to the bar and sat next to her with a sigh. She ignored him and ordered another drink.

It was tempting. Now more than ever. The only thing that kept him from jumping that edge and ordering a beer (how much damage could a simple beer make?) was the promise he had made to Peter before all that disaster unfolded.

He had been learning about addictions in school, and he was a smart kid. He had figured out why Tony always opted out for a soda when Pepper, Rhodey and his Aunt drank wine on their small family dinners.

“You never stop being an alcoholic, kid,” had answered Tony after Peter’s kind insistence. “I just stopped drinking.”

The kid had been pensive for a while. Then he had asked him if he had plans on drinking ever again. Battling between an access of rage and the urge of tears, Tony had chosen neither, and simply promised Peter that he had in fact no plans to ever drink again. That had been enough reassurance for the kid.

He couldn't betray his word. He physically couldn't. The mere thought of breaking his promise to him was ten times more repulsive than the tempting idea of ordering a glass of something.

Nebula ordered again. Tony looked away.

After half an hour, Tony decided he had had enough. He walked out of the cantina and leaned against the outside wall. It was getting dark, and the sky looked a greyish green over the horizon. The atmosphere of that moon probably had a higher concentration of phosphorus rather than oxygen. It was fine. He was accustomed to the 20-80 ratio of nitrogen and oxygen on earth. He should be able to breath fine, right?

Right?

A group of shady-looking men (and creatures) were gathering around the corner. Next to them were a couple of speeder bikes parked by the road. The were muttering among themselves, and throwing glances around the streets.

Tony had a bad feeling about this.

Nebula exited the cantina by kicking the door with her boots, staggering around until she reached him. She smelled like alcohol poisoning. She somehow seemed angrier at his general existence.

“Can we leave now?” asked Tony, impatient. She snorted.

“Wheneeever you please, asshole.”

Well that was uncalled for. Tony rolled his eyes and started marching towards the direction of the ship. He kind of remembered the path they had taken when they first arrived to the market. The town was small enough that he couldn't get lost.

“Hey, you, bitch!” screamed one of the men from the corner, and Tony froze in his place. Nebula turned to them baring her teeth, feral. “Aren't you one of Thanos’ bastards?”

“And what if I am?” she screamed back, already taking out her sword. Tony observed as the men rapidly took out their weapons and pointed at them. The situation was escalating way too quickly for his liking.

“I will _avenge_ my wife!” swore one of the creatures. Tony flinched at his use of words.

Nebula didn’t care. She laughed at the poor fucker’s face. “I didn’t kill your bitch,” she mocked. “Collect your debts with the creature who owes them.”

Five laser guns were pointed at her head. “Say that again,” dared he one of the men. Tony was regretting every life decision that had led him to this precise moment. And Nebula was so fucking drunk.

With a lighting strike his mind reminded him of the bikes. _Of course._

“Keep them distracted,” he whispered to Nebula, who turned her head one millimeter to his direction as her only sign of acknowledgment. “I’ll get one of the bikes.”  

Without needing another word, she jumped the men and attacked them with all her strength. For the second time in that day, Tony was taken aback by the sheer might and ferocity of Nebula. She fought with Natasha’s ability and grace, Steve’s brute force and strategy, Clint’s surgical precision and Bruce’s neverending rage. She was a force of nature.

Still, they were armed with laser weapons and all Nebula had was a sword. She still had to dodge the fire and manage to not lose a limb in the process. It was eight against one, and she was unstoppable. But she was also drunk as a skunk.

Tony took advantage of the chaos and jumped right to the speeder bikes parked a few meters away from them. He jumped on the first one and looked for any indication of an activation mechanism. He couldn't find anything. If he had to guess, the vehicle probably worked with a specific code to be able to start the engine. It was time to solve it the old fashion way.

Tony dropped his knees to the ground and inspected the speeder’s engine. He fidgeted around with cables and tubes until he found what he was looking for. He took out two specific cables and pulled them together by the ends, trying to make the circuit start. He tried a couple of times until he heard the hum of the engine starting.

Bingo.

Tony hopped on the speeder, made the engine roar with acceleration, and screamed: “HEY!” at Nebula, who was currently stabbing two men at the same time with her sword. She turned around, pulled her weapon from their bodies, who dropped to the ground like rag dolls, and ran to him. Once she was behind him on the speeder, Tony released the brake and they flew on a straight line over the sandy road of the market.

They zigzagged around stalls, people, and moving vehicles. Tony could hear the men behind them, following them on their own speeders and shooting at them. He maneuvered around a corner, trying to duck the fire. And strangely enough, Nebula was laughing.

Maybe this was what she needed, after all. A little bit of fire, danger and adrenaline. And she was also piss drunk.

After two more corner turns, Tony found their ship. He quickly entered the hangar and parked next to the ship, that was very evidently not finished in repairs. Still, it looked in better shape than it was when they had arrived. He ran to the landing ramp and Nebula followed him, still euphorically high. The creatures of the shop were screaming at them from the bottom, but Tony didn't care. He ran to the cockpit and sat on the pilot seat, concentrated on getting them the fuck out of that shithole. He screamed at Nebula to get on the laser cannons and start shooting back at the bastardas that were wrecking the ship, one blast at the time, but she didn’t listen. She stood in front of the main computer’s terminal and established a course for who knew where. Tony focused his attention on getting them on the air, but the engines were taking fire. They had to run, fast.

“There’s a jump point forty degrees up zenit,” Nebula indicated him when they finally started to ascend.

“Isn’t “up” and “zenit” kind of redundant?” asked Tony, turning the ship on one side to avoid fire from the ground. The entire ship trembled with each blaster fire that reached them. He flew them up on a forty degree angle. Nebula glared at him.

“You know nothing, Stark,” she spat at him.

“And yet, this is the second time today that I’m forced to save your ass.”

She looked ready to jump him and choke him with the seatbelt for his insolence. Luckily, she seemed to decide against it, and simply rolled her eyes.

The ship crossed the atmosphere and Tony saw the jump point straight ahead of them. They crossed the jump and the ship entered hyperspace.

  
  


The flight on the quinjet back to the States was quiet. Natasha still wouldn’t talk to him. It was fine, he understood. He had found her silently weeping over Sam’s old uniform that morning before they took off, and Steve hadn’t dared to disturb her.

Rhodey had been on the phone the entire flight. He had said he needed to make some arrangements, and then proceed to ignore them the entire time. It was him who had been able to negotiate their return to american soil. It had seemed like an easy task, now that half the government officials who hated them were gone. But maybe after their failure, they had actually doubled.

Bruce and Thor were as quiet as the rest of them. Steve was sure he had never seen Thor so out of it in all the years they’ve known each other. He was a completely different man. Gloomy, introverted, sad. He was broken.

He guessed they all were. That’s what utter defeat can do to a person.

After a couple of hours, which Steve took advantage off by taking a brief nap -a wakandan nurse had forced him to take sleeping pills after a week of finding him wandering around at three am-, they reached the outskirts of the Avengers compound.

In appearance, nothing had changed since last time they were there ten days ago. In reality, everything had changed.

He felt bad, invading the compound like this. The place he had once called home, for a brief period of time. But now, everywhere he looked he saw Sam, laughing in the common room at Natasha’s jokes. He saw Wanda, painting her nails in the kitchen, keeping Vision company. He saw Tony, back from the city after a busy week, inviting him a drink with a wicked smile.

He never saw Bucky, because fate had decided his two worlds were incompatible.

Once they were inside the main building, everyone scattered. Natasha left to the armory, probably to shoot a poor manikin into oblivion. Bruce sat in the lab, wanting to jump back into action, but unable to shake off Tony’s ghost from his mind. Thor went to the kitchen and decided to drown his sorrows on cookies and bread. Rhodey was the only left standing in the entrance hall with Steve.

“I need to check on Pepper,” he said “If she’s… I mean…”

Steve nodded, understanding. Rhodey went down to the garage and left, effectively leaving Steve alone.

He wandered around the facility, his mind lost. He felt like a wandering star, burning too brightly, consuming itself. Steve was a man of simple principles, and every single of them had failed him. His entire belief system had been burned to the ground. And he was too exhausted to pick up the ashes.

Before he realized he found himself inside his old office. Strangely enough, most of his stuff where exactly like he had left them the morning before parting to Germany two years ago. The only things that were different were some papers on top of his desk and his shield, that was leaning against a cabinet, collecting dust.

Something inside him broke.

Seeing the shield over there, mocking him, was the physical manifestation of everything that he had lost. He had failed so many people. His friends, who he had dared to call family. He had failed Tony, most of all, and now he was dead. And even pissed, Tony had kept his shield safe on his office. He had respected his space, while Steve had been unable to respect anything Tony had ever provided. Not his intelligence, his job, his home, not even his family. Steve’s attitude had gone well beyond pulling Tony’s pigtails. And even after everything, Tony had still preserved this space for him.

 

The next morning, Steve wandered into the kitchen where Bruce was serving breakfast. Thor was wearing the same clothes from the night before, and Natasha seemed busy fixing up a travel bag.

“Are you going somewhere?” asked Steve, worried. Natasha ignored him. He sighed, tired of her attitude.

“Coffee?” offered Bruce, placatory. Steve nodded and sat down next to Thor, who only looked at him briefly to acknowledge his existence.

After she was finished with her bag and got up from the table, Steve addressed Natasha again: “Are you going somewhere?”

She pursed her lips and turned to him. “Yes.”

There was an ugly silence. Steve could feel himself starting to feel more irritated by the minute.

“Can we know where?” he insisted. Natasha studied him, insolent, and seemed to decide he wasn’t worth the effort.

“I’m going to find Clint.”

Before Steve could respond, Thor lifted his head.

“Good luck,” he wished Natasha, and there was something in his godly voice that made that sentence feel like a blessing. For the first time in weeks, Steve saw Natasha smile.

“Thank you,” she said, and walked out of the kitchen unprompted.

Nobody said much else after that. When they were finished eating, each one retreated back to their respective corners of the facility. Steve decided to visit the dock. He sat in a bench, staring out at the water.

He couldn't stop thinking about Tony. He was everywhere he looked. That place, that beautiful wooden platform by the shore of the lake had been personally designed by him. Of course it was. Everything Tony designed was beautiful.

He probably would never admit it, but Steve though Tony was an artist. Yes, he was a brilliant engineer and scientist, but what he could do with a sketching pencil and some paper? or maybe just a holographic display? That was pure art. Engines, buildings, computers, planes,  even parks. Tony was a designer, and a very good one. His armors, fuck. Just thinking about them made Steve’s heart flutter. The hard exterior, the shining surface, the perfect curves, the smooth finish. And most importantly, the man on the inside.

Steve had made peace with his feelings for Tony years ago. He was aware that his opportunity had passed. But sometimes he couldn’t help but wonder what would have been like, if he had said yes. If he had just said fucking yes, that lazy night when Tony, sleepy and satisfied on top of his naked chest, had asked him if he wanted to take the next step, make their _thing_ into a relationship. But Steve had been so scared, and so foolish. To think Tony would wait eternally for him to make up his mind. A couple of months later, Tony was back with Pepper.

And now Tony was engaged.

Tony was also probably dead.

Hot tears slided down Steve’s cheeks, and he let them. Very quickly, his tears turned into full sobs, and he doubled down on himself, trying to contain the anguish.

Tony was dead, and it was probably his fault.

 

After a couple of hours, Steve went back to the main building. On his way upstairs, he heard voices coming from the living room, so he made his way towards them. He found Rhodey and Pepper, sitting together on one of the couches, talking agitatedly. The closer Steve got, the more he noticed some details. There was a box of books, pictures, and some papers on the coffee table. Rhodey looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Pepper’s eyes and nose were red, like she had been crying very recently.

He cleared his throat to make his presence known, and they turned to look at him. Pepper smiled at him, sweetly.

“Hello Steve,” she said. “It’s good to see you.”

He wished he could return the sentiment. Not because he wanted her dead, not at all, but because it was hard for him to feel anything besides defeat, guilt, and sadness.

“It’s good to see you too,” he replied anyway.

“I was just bringing some of Tony’s stuff to Bruce,” she explained, gesturing to the box full of mementos. “He said it could help him find Tony faster.”

It was that what Bruce had been up to the past two days? And Steve had just been weeping on the park, feeling sorry about himself?

“That’s if Tony’s even al-” muttered Rhodey.

“-He’s alive,” interrupted him Pepper, assertive. Rhodey sighed but she ignored him. “I’m sure of it.”

Steve didn’t have the heart to explain to her that even if everyone’s odds of surviving had been fifty-fifty, Tony’s were probably much lower. He had gone to utter space to fight Thanos, and Thanos had clearly won the battle. If Steve knew Tony at least a little bit, he knew he had done everything in his power to prevent that from happening. Thanos’ arrival to Earth could only mean one thing.

Rhodey got up from the sofa. “I’m starving. You guys want anything?”

“A tea, maybe?” asked Pepper. Steve shook his head. Rhodey nodded and left to the kitchen. Pepper then sighed. “He thinks I’m deluding myself. But I know what I’m talking about. Tony isn’t dead.”

Steve wanted to cry again. “I don’t…”

“I can feel it, Steve. I know deep in my bones he’s out there. And he needs us. Can’t you see it too?”

She was desperate. Steve couldn't bring himself to break her heart. “I really hope you’re right.”

She smiled at him, and Steve had the sinking feeling that Pepper was able to read his mind.

“I’m not an idiot, I know this is a worst case scenario. But I was going to marry Tony Stark,” she whispered. “It’s not like I wasn’t prepared for the worst. Have been for years.”

Steve had no idea what to respond to that. She petted her skirt with her hands, probably trying to soothe herself.

“Can you take this box to Bruce for me? It’s getting late, and I don’t wanna interrupt him…”

Steve nodded. Pepper smiled at him, always the gentle soul. Steve was sure he didn’t deserve her kindness. Maybe that was why she was so perfect for Tony, because of her forgiving heart.

She got up and left the compound, leaving Steve with a heavier conscience than before.

  
  


The ship was in bad conditions. After a couple of hours where Nebula just naped on top of the copilot controls, Tony decided to do a check-up of the general state of the ship. What he found was alarming.

One of the wings was crooked, the landing pad had been almost completely blown off, and worst of all, they had a leak on the fuel tank. They had to fix that issue, fast.

Afraid he’d lose a finger (or something worse) in the process, Tony tried to gently wake up Nebula. She jumped in her seat like she had been poked in the ass with a needle, and in less than two seconds she had the tip of her sword pinching his throat.

Tony lifted both arms in the air in surrender. She glared at him, clearly pissed off, and put down her weapon.

“What?” she growled.

Tony didn’t care if she had a hangover, was sleepy, or generally irritated at the universe. They had a situation to attend.

“We have a problem,” he explained. “We have to fix the tank right now, or we’re going to lose all our fuel in less than two hours.”

That seemed to wake her up instantly. She sat up straighter, blinked a couple of times, and quickly began typing on the computer’s terminal. Diagnostics run through the screen and Tony tried to gather information from what he was seeing.

Suddenly, Nebula gasped loudly.

“FUCK!” she screamed, and typed furiously to the computer. Error messages started to pop up everywhere. She kept cursing, seeming to get more hysterical by the second.

“What? What’s happening?” asked Tony, scared by her outburst. He knew the problem was bad, but it was fixable. They just had to act fast.

Nebula turned to him, her blue complexion pale and her eyes terrified.

“There was…” she drifted off and read more of the information on the screens, clearly experiencing difficulty articulating a complete sentence. Tony had never seen her like this.

“WHAT?” he demanded.

She closed her hands into fists.

“There was a miscalculation on the hyperspace jump. The ship’s computer was supposed to map out a known trajectory, but I guess they managed to fire on some of the computer’s systems because…” She looked at him in the eyes. “We’re on a direct path to a star. We need to fix the trajectory _now_ , or we’ll be consumed by the star in less than an hour.”

Cold dread settled in Tony’s bones. He allowed himself exactly ten seconds of complete and utter panic, where he covered his mouth with his hands and tried to breathe properly. In, and out. _Again_ . In, out. _Again_.  In… out…..

Then, his mind made a _click_ sound. He collected all his fear and desperation, put it inside a box, shoved it to a corner of his mind, and closed it with three locks.

Time to focus on the problem.

“At what distance are we from the star’s center of mass?”

Nebula checked the computer’s data. “3.407 parsecs.”

Very quickly he calculated the estimated velocity they had to be moving and the relative distance to the star taking into account the interdimensional distortion of the hyperspace lane. He had learned a lot from Jane Foster’s papers on interdimensional travel, Asgardian technology and hyperspace. He assumed the same principles were applicable.

“Nebula, get us out of hyperspace. That will buy us some time.”

She seemed unsure. “The jump alone could tear the ship appart.”

Tony shook his head. “It’s a risk we’ll have to take. We’re close enough to be already trapped by the star’s gravitational pull. We need to be able to see where are we going and how are we going to fix it.”

She closed her mouth with a loud _clanck_. Then, she nodded slowly. “Yes. I get us out of hyperspace. Then what?”

Like a freezing dagger, panic stabbed Tony in the middle of his chest. He swallowed his own saliva.

“Then…. I get on the outside of the ship, and fix the tank’s leak.”

Nebula looked at him like he had grown an extra head. “Are you fucking _insane_? How exactly will you manage to not die?”

Tony smirked a little, bitter. “There’s no alternative. I’ll use one of the oxygen suits, what’s left of my armor, and that’ll have to make do.”

He wasn’t looking forward to it, but they had no alternative.

Nebula indicated the ship’s computer to make the jump and come out of hyperspace. The jump was rough indeed. Tony almost flew through the cockpit to the ship’s main hall, but managed stay on his feet by grabbing a pipe.

There, imposing in the horizon, they could see the star. It was a blue giant, probably close to ten times the size of the sun. Or at least, Tony’s sun.

“We need to divert the trajectory in a wide enough angle so we fall into a hyperbolic orbit-” started Tony, and Nebula nodded along.

“-so we use the kinetic energy to be blasted back into interstellar space,” she completed. “Genius.”

Tony tried to not feel too proud of himself. “It’s sort of my thing.”

He was sure she didn’t mocked him because she was too concentrated on the ship’s controls. Or maybe she was already starting to warm up to him.

Running out of excuses, Tony walked to the landing pad of the ship. He had enough of the nannities of the suit to be able to use both rocketboots and one gauntlet. The rest of his body would be protected by the oxygen suits.

“Are you ready?” screamed Nebula from the cockpit.

 _Not in a million years,_ thought Tony.

“Yes!” he screamed back at her.

Seconds later, she activated a shield behind his back, protecting the oxygen of the ship, and slowly opened the landing pad where Tony would exit into fucking outer space. Neil Armstrong his ass.

The first thing he saw was nothing. His entire field of vision was surrounded by blackness. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the gloom and little stars started to appear in the background.

 _Stark, you know that’s a one way trip,_ said a familiar voice in his head. Tony stopped at the edge of the platform for a second.

Steve… always the worst timing.

 _This time will be different,_ Tony tried to convince himself. _This time I’m doing it for myself._

With his heart frozen in a state of panic, Tony jumped into the dark abyss.

  
  


The ringing of his phone woke Steve from a nightmare. He wasn’t very pleased, it wasn’t like the real world was a better reality. He growled and turned on his bed, tapping on the bedside table to find the hellish device. He picked up without looking who was calling at four am in the fucking morning.

“Hello?”

“Clint’s fine,” greeted him Natasha. She was still pissed, then.

“Good morning to you too.”

“He was in Tokio,” she ignored his complain. “I found something that might interest you.”

“And it couldn’t have waited until the morning? It better be good.”

“It’s Fury. Before you ask, he’s gone. But he left an old  pager behind.”

“A what?”

“That’s not the interesting part: it’s been modified. Very advanced tech. I’m just guessing, but it looks like it can sends messages on a very long distance range. I’m talking light years away.”

Steve didn’t need to hear more.

 _Tony_.

 

Hours later they were all reunited around a holographic table that displayed a map of the entire world. The numbers of missing people (dead, they were dead) were rising by the second on the screen. Bruce had taken the pager and connected it to a powerful battery, making it repeat it’s message again and again.

It was Tony, Steve was sure of it. Pepper had been right. This was a signal. He had left something behind to be contacted with. Now they just needed to find him.

He could feel the other’s stares on his back. Steve knew they thought he was delusional. He understood now how alone Pepper must have been feeling.

“What if it’s not Stark,” said Thor. “What if it’s another enemy and we’re opening the door to them.”

“If there’s a change it’s Tony, then we must take the risk,” answered Steve without looking at him. Thor sighed. Steve turned to confront him, then. “We have to try. What if he’s lost? What if he needs us?”

“Tony’s smart, Steve,” reminded him Rhodey, who had been silent until then. “He found a way to come back from the death twice already.”

“Three times,” corrected him Natasha.

Steve scoffed. “This is different. He’s in space, for fuck’s sake. He needs us.”

“Does he?” questioned him Thor. “Or do _you_ need _him_?”

Steve resisted the urge to punch him in the face. “I won’t give up on him. Not again.”

  
  
  


With slow steps and clinging to the side of the ship, Tony walked down the outer walkway that led to the bottom where the tanks were. His hands felt like plasticine and his body sweated cold. One bad step and everything would end in an instant. A bad breath, a scratch on his spacesuit, and the endless darkness would swallow him forever.

Nebula cursed under his breath and hit the main computer. Stupid, _why had she been so stupid?_ She let her guard down and because of that now they were minutes away from complete annihilation. Death by starfire. Not how she had planned to go at all.

She had to restart the computer. There was a very strong possibility that it wouldn't turn back up again, and that would certainly mean the end. But she had no alternative.

“I'm in position,” said Stark from the comms. “I see the leak. It's going to take a while to fix, maybe ten minutes.”

Nebula shook her head firmly, “You have five.”

She had to restart the computer manually. She ran to the cockpit and introduced the code.

“Going blind on three, two, one-” she hit enter and all the lights on the Benatar turned off. “Good luck.”

Darkness evolved Tony like an ocean, dragging him to its depths. The view was fantastic. But he needed to break to the surface and breathe.

Slowly, carefully, he used the laser on his right gauntlet to access the broken tank. He would have to seal the leak manually.

Nebula used her internal computer to calculate a new path. They would have to circumvent the star half a rotation and change the angular momentum enough to use that impulse to jump to a more energetic orbit, a hyperbolic one. They would need the energy boost, and without a working engine...

“Three minutes,” she said to Stark on the comms.

The temperature was raising. At least two Kelvin degrees by the minute. That meant they were getting closer and closer. Time was running out.

“I don’t have a clean way to seal the tank,” replied Tony. Nebula scoffed.

“I don’t think hygiene is our main concern here-”

“It’s not that. If I leave the gap dirty with fuel it might explode when I seal it.”

“Then do something different!” screamed Nebula, “Two minutes until computer reboot!”

 _Think_ , Stark, _Think_. Using the laser to melt the metal was going to end up in flames. He couldn't use tape to seal a fuel tank, they were going to need a reliable fix if they were to ever jump back into hyperspace. He needed a material that would hold up the temperature and the pressure difference….

The armor.

 _No_ , he had already lost half the nanities of the armor on Titan.

The material was perfect. He could order the nannities to seal into a perfect vacuum.

 _No, no!_ That would leave him defenseless. What if Nebula decided he was too much of a liability and sliced him in half with her swords?

That was a stupid fear. This had to work!

The temperature was raising. He could feel his skin getting hot through the oxygen suit. The armor was prepared to sustain immensely high temperatures, and he was starting to feel the difference.

“One minute!” reminded him Nebula through the comms.

His field of vision was getting lighter and lighter. Tony turned around one second and regretted it immediately: the star was close enough to burn itself on his retinas.

He was starting to sweat. Soon the temperature would be unbearable to his human body, and he didn’t have enough of the armor to cover him entirely.

“DO SOMETHING!” screamed Nebula on his ear. _Do something!_ , his mind echoed.

 _Please forgive me,_ he begged to the darkness. _Please don’t forget me._

He extended the hand covered in a gauntlet and covered the fuel tank with it. He ordered the nannities to seal the gap.

The lights turned on and illuminated the inside of the ship. Nebula jumped to the computer and entered the calculated flying path for the new orbit.

“It’s done!” said Stark. But only part of it was done. The star was getting closer and closer.

“Go back here _now_ ,” she ordered him.

The computer was reading a tank half full. The interior of the ship was illuminated by the blue hue of the star, and it was getting brighter. She heard a labored breath and approaching footsteps. Her remaining organic skin was starting to sweat.

Tony sat down next to her, trying to catch his breath.

Everything on the horizon was blue. This was it, then. The last thing he’d ever see would be a bright blue light. One on his chest, another on the sky.

Nebula activated the engine and hit the gas to maximum impulse. They shifted the angle, and the acceleration was so strong Tony’s body was compressed back into his seat.

“Tighten your seatbelt,” she said, and that was about the last comprehensible thing Tony was able to hear. The sky was getting brighter and brighter, the temperature hotter, and the pressure on his body was rasing. At some point, he turned his head and vomited on the ground.

After what it seemed like an hour, but it was probably just an instant, Nebula activated the hyperdrive and they jumped back into hyperspace.

 

The engine was dead.

They had barely enough fuel to power the life support systems. The main computer was fried. They had jumped on a path to earth but they didn’t have enough fuel to make the entire way there. They hadn’t really moved that much at all.

The were adrift, stuck in the periphery of a giant and colourful nebula.

Poetic, wasn’t it?

It would be weeks before some pirate ship of random Nova Corp passed them and noticed them. They didn't have weeks.

Soon they realized food was going to be a problem. The cupboards in the kitchen were practically empty, and the food they had brought from the market consisted of ten rations and nothing else. They rummaged the entire ship up and down and only found expired treats and some junk food half eaten, half rotten.

They had launched themselves on an interstellar trip without enough fuel. It wasn’t like they had another alternative either. They didn’t have much food, nor did they have much water. Both of them were injured, frustrated, depressed.

What else could possibly go wrong?

  


Steve stared at the global map intensely, Natasha by his side. She hadn’t said a word to him in an hour. The numbers of missing people kept rising.

“This is a nightmare,” he whispered.

“I’ve had better nightmares,” said Natasha. Steve had to agree.

“Hey,” they heard steps behind them and turned around to see Rhodey entering the room. “That thing just stopped doing whatever the hell it was doing.”

They quickly walked out of the room to find Bruce staring at the pager. “Whatever signal it was sending, it finally cracked out.”

“I thought we bypassed the battery,” argued Steve.

“We did,” replied Rhodey. “It’s still plugged in, it just… stopped.”

Steve looked at the device and studied it with his eyes. “Reboot it and send the signal again.”

“We don’t even know what this is-” intervened Bruce.

“Fury did,” sentenced Natasha. “Tell me the second you get a signal. I wanna know who’s on the other end of that thing.”

She turned around to go back to the conference room, but stopped in her tracks at the presence of a woman standing in the hallway. The stranger was a tall blonde who was dressed in a red, blue and gold combat uniform, and she looked pissed.

“Where’s Fury?” she demanded.

 

It was time to accept reality, then. Tony was dead.

The woman -Carol Danvers, she said her name was- had changed into more comfortable clothes and was talking to Natasha, who briefed her on the situation. She was a friend of Fury's and that had seemed reason enough to trust her. At one point Thor got up from his chair and called his new axe to threaten Carol, but he seemed to detect something on her eyes and her powerful aura that convinced him to leave her be.

After a while, Steve left. He retrieved to his quarters and sat down on his bed, exhausted. He hadn’t done anything physically demanding, but he felt tired deep in his bones.

Maybe sitting on that bed had been a bad idea. Memories of Tony and him laughing and messing around like two teenagers in love flooded his mind, and Steve almost drowned on them. He had been so foolish then. He remembered thinking that was the begining of happiness, that was where it all began. Things would only get better from then on. But that wasn’t the beginning, that _was_ happiness.

And he had thrown it all away.

He had been scared, then. Dates and years would say differently, but Tony was a good fifteen years older than him. He was decidedly on a different stage of life. He had wanted to settle down, get married, have a kid, even if he wasn’t able to admit it to himself then. And Steve had been terrified of that. He hadn’t figured out what he wanted to do with his own life, less alone what to do sharing one with someone else. And Tony wouldn't wait around for him to figure it out.

Pepper was a wonderful woman, and in more than one aspect, she was everything Tony needed. But Steve was sure she wasn’t everything he wanted.

He wasn’t arrogant enough to think _he_ was all of that either.

  
  


Hunger was killing him.

His head felt heavy, like a water balloon. If he moved too fast he saw the stars. His stomach accumulated dust, and soon it would begin to eat itself. His throat was constantly burning, dry.

He knew he could last between two weeks, maybe three without eating. He could probably last one week without water. They would have to ration water incredibly well. No more showers. Everything was a luxury. Maybe one glass of water a day. Maybe less.

Tony would sometimes get angry: he would hit the walls with his fists, furious. He didn’t have much energy inside of him. He ended up breaking a couple of fingers. Furious with himself, with his pathetic body, with his useless legs, with hunger, with thirst.

His anger would morph into sadness, fast like lightning. He would hide in one of the ship’s cabins, he would cry for hours on end. Then, he would fall asleep for an entire day, but never enough to regain energy. He was always tired. And the cycle would repeat.

Two days and they would run out of fuel.

After a long fight where Nebula almost tore Tony's head off, they ended up deciding to stop the course of the ship and reserve the last of the emergency fuel. They would continue on course for a few more light-years, product of the inertia of the ship, but after a few days they would inevitably stop product of the forces of radiation and gravity pulling on them from every direction.

They were adrift. Without direction, without current, without a map. Maybe it was time to accept that they had been lost for weeks.

Maybe it was time to accept reality, and give up. Maybe they had already given up.

 

Sometimes Tony dreamed. Most of the time he slept in silence, his mind calm in a state of white noise. But sometimes, a dream consumed him until there was nothing left of him except for his bones.

Dreams were confusing. Tony couldn't remember most of them. They felt like an access to a different reality, one were he was only a mere spectator of his own sins. Dreaming felt like being in free fall: liberating, filled with adrenaline and joy, terrifying. The entire universe was within his grasp and yet, he was insignificant.

Like memories, dreams had no beginning. Maybe an image was already there. A little boy, cheerful and bubbly. His face covered with a plastic mask. An Iron Man mask. Tony would fall on his knees in front of him, his eyes filled with tears. With shaking hands, he’d take off the mask from the kid’s face.

He was amazingly young, and beautiful like a blooming flower. His eyes shined like newborn stars. There were a couple of teeth missing on his charming smile.

“Peter…?” would ask Tony, holding the little kid’s hands. He felt lost, holding an imaginary friend from his childhood. He would understand then: that small and brave kid from the Stark Expo all those years ago. His path had always been intertwined with Tony’s. Loving him like his own had been simply fate.

In seconds, the kid would turn into dust.

  


Peter was an open wound in Tony’s chest. One that probably would never heal. It sat there, agonizing and bitter, along with the wounds that his parents had left. Or Jarvis’, who had been his father in all the ways that mattered.

Love was a muscle. One that needed constant exercise. Jarvis had taught him what unconditional love felt like, and part of that was why he resented his father so much. He had been blessed and cursed because he had an actual parameter of comparison. Every time Howard ignored, scoffed or insulted his mere existence, the pain felt ten times worse because thanks to Jarvis, he knew how a good father should behave.

And loving Peter had been so easy. Tony had taken one look at him and saw himself in a mirror, thirty years younger. He saw a brilliant child, full of love and kindness, desperate for some guidance. He needed someone to be proud of him. Someone to teach him how to fall, how to heal, how to get up again. His aunt had done a fantastic job. But she would never understand the need, deep inside his bones, to fix the world around him. That feeling of responsibility, even for the smallest things. The itch inside his gut to _do something._

“Was he your son?” asked Nebula out of the blue, while chewing on a small ration bar. It was the only thing they ate per day. In less than a week they would run out of food.

There were rare, the moments when they just sat and talked. In general they would avoid each other, each one trapped inside their own misery. Tony slept most of the time, drugged with hunger and fatigue. Sometimes he would hear Nebula come close, specially when Tony would sit by the cockpit. But generally she could be found by the kitchen, playing with a small and old music player that Tony suspected had belonged to Quill.

Tony looked at his hands, rough and dirty.

“Not biologically, no,” the constant state of dullness in his head allowed him to speak without fear. It was like being drunk: he understood the words he said a second after they had left his mouth. He had no control or filter, but he was not ashamed either. “But I loved him like he was.”

Nebula frowned and crossed her arms, contemplative. She would do that a lot, playing bad girl and pretending to be offended by the simplest things.

“He was lucky, then,” she said. It took Tony a couple of seconds to understand her.

“Lucky how?”

Nebula looked towards the window of the ship, away from him. Tony understood her need not to show vulnerability at any cost.

“He died knowing he was loved. Not everyone gets that luxury.”

Tony, strangely, thought of his mother. Trapped in an unhappy marriage, with a son who didn’t value her enough, lonely by the corners of a giant  and empty mansion. Guarding a nest that would remain empty for all eternity, after pushing out her child far too soon. Tony wondered if she had known how much he had loved her, despite the bitterness and resentment.

“I need your help,” admitted Nebula between her teeth, breaking the silence. Tony studied her.

“Yes?”

She hardened her expression and looked at him, defiant.

“One of the mechanisms in my arm is failing. I need to clean up the gears, but I can't reach them.”

Tony nodded. “Is it hurting you?”

Nebula crossed her arms in her chest, one of them clearly hurting her.  “That doesn't matter. Can you do it or not?”

Tony’s stupid brain took a couple of seconds to formulate a satisfying answer.

“I can try.”

  
  


Sometimes his dreams were just _weird_.

The silhouette of a naked woman, bleeding from a wound in her abdomen, sobbing on the ground. A ten meters tall shadow above her, slurring hurtful words. A terrified child who jumped out of the window, transforming his arms into wings mid fall and flying to the top of a tree. The sky, unmoving, unchanging, unforgiving.

His beautiful Pepper, smiling dressed in white. She would kneel on the ground and receive a child with open arms. She would hug them against her chest, turn with a smile and point at Tony who stared at them, spellbound. The kid wouldn't have a face. It just didn’t exist.

At the end of the alsile, Steve would stand proud and beautiful. Insecurities and judgement were foreign to his expression. Only compassion and understanding.

Tony would come closer, scared shitless. He would know before it happened. The wind would take all of them with it, along with the rest of the ashes in the sky.

  


“Was Gamora your sister?” asked Tony, studying the gears inside Nebula’s left arm.

She was tense, lining up the tools on the table in perfect and obsessive order. She stopped a second to stare at one of the screwdrivers.

“Adopted sister. Thanos kidnapped both of us when we were children.”

Tony cleared his throat. “I can only imagine how awful he was as a father.”

Nebula's hands were shaking a little, and Tony pretended not to notice.

“He would make us fight each other. Every time I lost he would replace a piece of my body. And Gamora won _every time_ ,” her eyes filled with tears, and she blinked repeatedly until they went away. “She was kind, in the end. She didn't deserve to die at the hands of that monster.”

Nobody did, thought Tony. That monster had been a father. There was a special place in hell reserved for those who mistreated their children, and the punishments there were probably too kind for someone like Thanos.

If someone had the right to kill her father, it was Nebula.

 

They reached their point of desperation two days before water would run out completely. Nebula was more talkative than ever, but Tony was completely unable to understand her or register her words. They were going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.

One afternoon, he had this realizing thought. Nobody on earth would ever know what had happened to him. He would be lost in history, like a sailor who had set sail on the high seas and had never returned.

“And what are you going to do about it?” asked a masculine voice from the other corner of the room. Startled, Tony turned to it.

Steve was there, standing in all his glory. He was wearing a white button up shirt, comfortable jeans, and he was barefoot. His hair was a little long at the front, and he was clean shaven.

Tony blinked several times. “Excuse me?”

Steve smiled at him.

“You feel like your legacy will fade into oblivion.” It wasn’t a question. “What are you going to do about it?”

Hallucination Steve had a point. Tony had spent the last decade reshaping his legacy into something he could be proud of. But there was nothing else he could do, stuck in a broken spaceship, adrift into interstellar space.

“You could try sending a message,” said Bruce. Tony smiled, and tuned to see him sitting by the copilot seat, more relaxed than he had ever seen him.

“We're thousands of light years away. Amy message with take centuries to reach Earth.”

“You'll never know if you don't try,” observed Steve.

It's not like he had much more to lose. Closing his eyes, Tony ordered the armor to form a helmet, but he only managed to make half of it. Slowly, he took it out of his head and set it on the floor in front of him. When he looked up, Steve and Bruce were gone.

At least he should say goodbye.

He touched the side of the helmet and a holographic scan shoot from the eyes of the armor. Tony counted to ten, choosing his words very carefully, and recorded a message for Pepper.

“This thing on? Hey Miss Potts, if you find this recording, don't feel bad about this.” Just the idea of her feeling guilty for his own stupid mistakes made him want to cry. But it was time to grow up and say goodbye. “Part of the journey is the end.”

 

“You need to do something about this, Tony. You’re going to die,” protested Thor while Tony was busy vomiting the bile from his empty stomach for the third time that day.

“Maybe that’s what he wants,” argued Natasha, who had only appeared to judge him. Not even in the comfort of his own mind he was able to confront Natasha’s intimidating personality.

Tony doubled over the toilet seat and vomited again.

“Yuck, that one came with extra blood,” said Clint. “That’s not good.”

“You’re dying,” reminded him Bruce, gently. “We have to do something.”

“Vomiting blood could mean liver failure,” observed Steve.

Tony scoffed. “And when _exactly_ did you went to med school, Rogers?”

Steve shook his head but his kind demeanor didn’t flicker. “I’m a product of your mind, Tony. I’m just telling you what you already know.”

Approaching footsteps and insisting knocking on the bathroom door startled Tony. _Nebula_.

“Are you ok in there?” she asked him, clearly worried, but pretending to be irritated.

Tony sat up straighter, and his entire field of view spun around like a rollercoaster. “I’m alright.”

“You have to do _something_ , Tony,” insisted Bruce. “If not for you then for her.”

It wasn't like the thought hadn't crossed Tony's mind. In fact, he was talking to a physical manifestation of his own subconscious. He knew he should be doing more, but he had reached rock bottom.

Maybe it was time to accept defeat.

He got up from the bathroom floor with extreme difficulty and walked out through the door. Nebula was there, waiting for him. She looked awful, but better than what he probably looked like, all things considered. Silently, she grabbed him by one elbow and helped him walk to the copilot seat where he sat down.

She stayed there with him for some minutes, staring out of the horizon. All they did lately was stare out of the window and wait for his imminent death.

Nebula put a gentle hand on his shoulder, almost tender, and then turned back around, leaving him to converse with his ghosts.

“Quantum engagement doesn't decay, right?” asked Natasha from the pilot seat. Tony shook his head.

“Not on a human scale.”

Suddenly, Steve snapped his fingers with renewed enthusiasm. Everyone turned to look at him.

“That's it! Quantum entanglement is instantaneous! If you alter one of the paired particles the change on the other is instantaneous no matter of they're on the other side of the universe!”

Tony remained sceptical. “Yes Steve, that's how it works. I still fail to understand how any of this is relevant.”

“Because,” whispered Thor, and his voice reverberated on Tony's chest, “the Mark 50 is equipped with a quantum computer.”

Then, everything in Tony's mind clicked into place. “A computer that's entangled with Stark Industries main server on Earth.”

Clint started to laugh with joy. Bruce shook his head, smiling widely. Natasha amd Thor had already vanished.

Only Steve remained when Tony called Nebula, screaming, and stayed by his side the entire time.

“What, what's the problem?” she spat at him. Tony didn't care, he was smiling like a madman.

“Go look for the tools. We need to restart the life support systems.”

She looked at him like he had gone insane. Maybe he had. “We'll run out of fuel. We'll die.”

Tony shook his head. “No, we're going home.”

  
  


Steve was out in the city when it happened. He had decided in the last week that remaining in the compound was an unbearable task. So he had been staying at a shitty hotel on Manhattan, because he hadn't dared to go back to Brooklyn.

His phone rang with an unfamiliar number. Annoyed, he considered hanging up. But something in his gut made him answer.

“Hello?”

A very shaky and worn out voice sighed with relief. A voice Steve could recognize everywhere.

“Hello Steve,” said Tony. “It's been a while.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](https://www.armoredsoftie.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://www.twitter.com/armoredsoftie)


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